After the Flood

by Kassandra Montag

The main thing she taught me was that there was no going back to before. There was no later, no “let’s wait and figure something out.” There was only now, all the neediness of the present, hands against your skin, wails filling the room, a body to be rocked. There was always only moving forward.

Hope would never come knocking on your door. You had to claw your way toward it, rip it out of the cracks of your loss where it poked out like some weed, and cling to it.